Finance Bill

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

Perhaps the hon. Lady could explain why the Conservatives supported our spending plans until 2008. As for public sector productivity, she will know as well as I do that if more medical staff are put on to nurse patients, one might get a higher survival rate and better care, but such outputs do not show up in the cold light of productivity statistics.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman talked about an illusion, and we can trade statistics back and forth, but at the election the ultimate judgment came down to the British people, who judged that Labour had failed to regenerate the economy and offer a way forward. That was the ultimate judgment, as opposed to the rose-tinted spectacles that he appears to be looking through.

[Mr Byrne]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the question of mandates. If one thing is clear in the debates that we have had in the months since the election, it is that there is absolutely no mandate for the VAT measure in the Finance Bill. I would be interested to hear how he is explaining that to his constituents.

I do not believe—nor have I heard any explanation of this—that some kind of recovery plan on the cheap could have delivered the economic recovery that is now under way. In life’s difficult moments, one is always open to advice, but the truth is that if we had followed the prescription of the Conservatives, we could have kissed goodbye to the recovery, not least because our banking system would have collapsed, the cash points would have stopped, the dole queues would have spiralled, repossessions would have spiked, and Britain’s small businesses would have been submerged beneath a wave of foreclosure, bankruptcy and liquidation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Creagh]

No, I want to finish my point. There is an important point to make about cots. No matter where people get their cot from, they should never put a baby to sleep on another child’s mattress, because they do not know what has happened to that mattress—whether it has been vomited or urinated on, for instance.

We talk about putting babies “back to sleep”, and about cutting the rate of sudden infant death—which predominantly happens in lower income households. There are issues here to do with families living in overcrowded housing and babies sharing beds with their parents, yet the hon. Lady is saying that new mums and expectant mums are supposed to go round hauling cots home in their eighth and ninth month of pregnancy and then putting them up. Frankly, she ought to think a little more about what she wishes for her constituents.

[Alun Cairns]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance on what cots have to do with the Finance Bill, and on the relevance of the points that have just been made.